A rather... interesting building seems to have sprouted overnight. Set close enough to the Classroom Building to see but not close enough for contamination is a sparkling confection of gingerbread and sugar, every corner perfectly shaped and every peppermint eave perfectly outlined in frosting. It looks delicious, but it's also... well, very very sparkly. As if the sparkles might cut your mouth like tiny glittery shuriken if you tried to bite it.
->Try to bite the structure anyway.
We told you.... Fine. You try to bite it. The sparkles do as advertised and you end up reeling backwards with no damage done to the house. You're probably bleeding. Geez.
... In any case, strange sounds come from within the building. Things like giggles, bell chimes, and more giggles. A sign mounted on a smooth peppermint-striped pole proclaims:
CHRISTMAS CULTURAL EXCHANGE PROGRAM
~*The Fine Art of Gingerbread Architecture*~ Madame Professor Plumcake, Gh.D, Educator
Maybe she's the one that's giggling in there... you should probably go check.
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:23 am
The First Day
As you step inside the building, you hear what sounds like the chiming of bells. Within the building is one huge room with rows of counters inside. It smells sweet and spicy and delicious in here... is that an oven on the far end? Is the oven also made of gingerbread? Maybe you shouldn't worry about that too much.
And then there is a great cheery jingle of bells, and without warning a woman is floating in the front of the room. She's... purple. Very purple. Her hair is a rich dark purple, her skin is a soft pale purple, even her eyes are purple. Her clothing is violently ruffly and lacy and sparkly and purple, and she has wings that look like they're made out of sugar. She's clearly some kind of fairy, but not a Halloween variety.
"Good morning, class!" she trills, sweeping a wand through the air and leaving a trail of sparkles in its wake. "I am the esteemed Professor Plumcake, Gh.D, and I have come to bestow upon you foul little creatures all the knowledge of the Gingerbread Artsnot that you deserve it!" She smiles and her teeth do this incredibly weird gleam thing.
"Now then, students!" She raps her wand on a gingerbread podium that you swear wasn't there a second ago. "We shall begin with the baking! Since the ingredients for proper gingerbread are only found within Christmas Town itself, I have taken the liberty of bringing a mix with me sully myself with ingredients from here, I ask you, the nerve."
She waves her wand again and bowls filled with a spicy-smelling brown powder materialize in front of each student, along with long-handled wooden spoons that have fat, fluffy purple bows on them. With jingle bells.
"So! Mix away, my dears disgusting things, but be careful - to reach the true height of Art, you must. Not. Over. MIX!" Whoa, she screamed there for a minute, but she was still smiling. "If you mix more than six times, your house will never come together as it should - yet you should still work to achieve perfection!" Another wave of the wand and liquid splashes into each bowl as if poured out of the air.
"Now mix, mix, my dears! MIX!"
Part 1: The Mixing
To Mix: Roll 1d12! As the Professor mentioned, you can only roll 6 times - more than that will ruin the batter.
The goal is to get a 12, or as close as you can to that number. Now, doing this involves an element of chance, because you have to stick with the result of your last roll. So if you roll an 11 or 12 your first try, perhaps it might be best to stop there! However, if you roll a 1 or a 3, it would be better to continue.
Just keep in mind that you can only roll 6 times, so...
--> Example: Say you've rolled 3, 1, 4, 4, 8. You've rolled five times. Your LAST roll was 8. You can either stop there and have a score of 8, OR you can gamble and roll one more time. However, whatever your last roll is you are stuck with so judge carefully - if you're happy with a score of 8, it might be worth it to stop there. Or you could take the gamble of potentially rolling a higher number... or a lower one. It's your choice!
Once you've either decided to stop mixing or rolled six times (with your last roll being the final result), check the table below to see how you did. You only RP the results of this final roll - if you keep mixing then just RP that you continued to mix.
1-2: The bowl isn't even on the counter anymore. It flew across the room. Maybe it hit someone on the way. How did you manage that? The Professor is still smiling at you but you think she might be grinding her teeth. 3-4: You have a mass of lumps in your bowl, but at least your bowl stayed put. 5-6: An average batter: nothing spectacular, but nothing disgusting. It just looks sort of blah. 7-8: Your batter is mostly smooth and has a little sparkle to it. Not bad, not bad... 9-11: Your batter glistens at the edges and has no lumps at all. Hey, this seems pretty good! 12: Your batter is sparkling more than some vampires. Dang. You detect a hint of grudging respect in the Professor's smile.
YOU HAVE UNTIL MONDAY 12/9 AT 8PM PST TO COMPLETE THIS ROUND. As this is the first round participating counts as signing up for the class! After this round sign-ups will be considered closed as the rounds do build on each other, so please make sure that you do this round if you want to participate. Thank you!
If you wish to address the Professor directly, please quote me (Sosiqui); I do have a full time IRL job so depending on when you ping me I may or may not be able to respond immediately. I will however respond as soon as I can.
Sosiqui
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Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:24 am
The Second Day
When you return the next day, there is a small stack of gingerbread shapes on your counter. Evidently the Professor baked everyone's batter and produced the pieces for you. Maybe she didn't trust anyone else with the actual baking...
"Attention!" the Professor says, rapping her wand on the podium in another shower of sparkles. "Now, my disgusting dears, you must assemble your structures! The pieces have been prepared for you, as has some excellent frosting!" The wand swishes through the air and a moment later fat tubes of white frosting appear on the counters. "But the assembly of gingerbread is not a simple matter!"
With another swish, what looks like a blackboard made of gingerbread appears; the Professor picks up a tube of icing from her podium and begins to ice the instructions onto the gingerboard. "You must consider structural integrity! The weight of the gingerbread! The weight of the icing! The compound interaction of stresses and gravity!" She smacks the gingerboard with her wand. The cookie cracks under the force of her strike.
"Fortunately for your tiny brains I have worked out a precise formula for gingerbread perfection! So if you can only achieve this perfect ratio, your structure will stand!" Another smack. The gingerboard wobbles threateningly, but the Professor seems not to notice. "Now - assemble your homes! At the end of this course, you will be judged on your work - perfection is required!"
Part 2: Structural Integrity
Today, you must build your house! You have been given tubes of frosting with which to stick your house together. At this point, you are not using candy or other decorations - that comes later! Today's work is putting your house together and making sure it stays in one piece.
Now, you have to get the frosting just so or else the house will collapse. Too little frosting and the pieces won't stick together at all! Too much frosting and the frosting will be too heavy and collapse the structure.
So how do you get everything just right? The perfect ratio is 3 - 4 - 2. (Ratio of what to what, you say? HUSH THIS IS CHRISTMAS MAGIC. Hush.) You must achieve this ratio through careful experimentation and dice rolls.
Roll 4d6 until you have rolled a 3, a 4, and a 2 in a single post. Why 4d6? Because I'm giving you one extra chance to get it right. The numbers do not have to be in exact order but they do all have to be on the same post.
That said, if you roll 10 times and don't get the numbers, you can auto-pass. Just make a note in your last post that you've rolled 10 times without getting the 3, 4, 2 and are taking the auto-pass option.
Include the following code in your final post:
[size=18][b]Building Done![/b][/size] Student: Mixing Score: [from day one, link your mixing result post here please] Building Score: [how many rolls did it take you to get 3, 4, 2? If you used auto-pass put 10+]
YOU HAVE UNTIL THURSDAY 12/12 AT 8PM PST TO COMPLETE THIS ROUND. Didn't do the first round? That's fine, you can still join in but you CANNOT go back and do the first day over. Just start from Day Two!
If you wish to address the Professor directly, please quote me (Sosiqui); I do have a full time IRL job so depending on when you ping me I may or may not be able to respond immediately. I will however respond as soon as I can.
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:25 am
The Third Day
On the third day, your houses seem much as they were when you left the classroom last time, but the icing has hardened and they are apparently structurally sound. The Professor is waiting next to what looks like a brand new, uncracked gingerboard, with a list of candies and other items iced onto the surface.
"Now, students!" She slams her wand into the gingerboard again with a shower of sparkles. "It is time for aesthetic wonderment to begin! Today we shall create Artif indeed you are capable of it!" She waves her wand and more white frosting tubes appear on the counters, one for each person. "You must select your items and begin decoration - but be careful, for there is only so much weight that your homes can bear! Too much, and they will fall!"
Another smack. A lower corner of the gingerboard falls off under the impact. "But too little, and your house will not satisfy! It will not delight! It will not ignite JOY in the hearts of all who view it! And that is UNACCEPTABLE." She hits the gingerboard so hard that the wand becomes embedded in it, and she has to pause for a moment to get the wand free. "... So ensure that your creation exhibits Taste! Otherwise, you shall be found wanting..."
Her smile looks really intense.
Part Three: Aesthetics
At last, it is time to decorate your house! You automatically receive a tube of white icing to decorate with, but of course you need some candies and such as well! Roll 10d12 to see what items you get:
Gingerbread House Ingredients
1 - A candy cane. ----- Taste: 6 Weight: 5
2 - Gumdrops in red, green, purple, white, and yellow. ----- Taste: 5 Weight: 4
3 - Red and white striped mints (like so). ----- Taste: 5 Weight: 5
- If you roll the same number multiple times then you have multiples of that item. - Items can be manipulated (i.e. candy canes can be crushed etc.) but it does not change their stats. If you have mints, plural, and only use one, the stats still don't change. - You do not have to use everything you roll - those are just the options you have. - You cannot trade items with others, sorry!
As you can see, each candy item has two qualities: Taste and Weight. An item's Taste is how much Professor Plumcake likes that item; having a high Taste score will improve your final product for judging. An item's Weight is of course how much it weighs.
Your gingerbread house can hold 20 units of Weight. More than that, and it will collapse. So you must make sure the ingredients you actually use in your house do not go over 20 Weight. (The frosting has no Weight value and depending on how you use it may have Taste value - it will be judged objectively by the Professor based on your description etc!)
However, when Professor Plumcake judges the houses, she will be randomly placing up to 4 units of additional Weight (by rolling 1d4) on the house as part of her judging process. If your house collapses during judging she will think less of your house! So again, this is a gamble on your part - will you impact your Taste score by putting on fewer items and play it totally safe with Weight? Or will you go as far as you can Taste-wise and risk potential collapse?
The choices are yours and yours alone!
In your final post, describe your gingerbread house as if you are presenting it to the Professor! You can include YOUR OWN drawings or photos (see the information below about bonus points!) but you may NOT use other people's images. Also include the following code in that post:
[size=18][b]Building Done![/b][/size] Student: Mixing Score: [from day one, link your mixing result post here please] Building Score: [from day two, link your building result post here please]
House Components: [list the items you used here, and link to the post in which you rolled for your 'inventory']
Base Taste Score: [the total taste of the items you used] Base Weight: [the total weight of the items you used]
YOU HAVE UNTIL MONDAY, 12/16 AT 8PM PST TO COMPLETE THIS ROUND, INCLUDING SUBMITTING FOR ANY OF THE BONUS POINTS BELOW. At this point the class is considered closed to new entries - if you did not complete the previous round then you cannot continue on in the class. So sorry!
If you wish to address the Professor directly, please quote me (Sosiqui); I do have a full time IRL job so depending on when you ping me I may or may not be able to respond immediately. I will however respond as soon as I can.
CHANCE FOR BONUS POINTS:
Today you can also obtain some bonus points that will be applied during judging! You may do ONE of the options below if you'd like! Include it in your final 'presentation' post.
- Draw your character's gingerbread house: +3 Taste points (must be your own work, art theft will result in immediate disqualification from the class and any rewards you may have accrued will be null and void) - Actually create your character's gingerbread house in real life as a 3-D object, whether it's out of real gingerbread or on a cardboard base: +6 Taste points (must include your Gaia SN on a piece of paper or something in the picture to prove you made it)
Sosiqui
Enduring Muse
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Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:28 am
The Testing
Posted: Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:36 am
----
Sosiqui
Enduring Muse
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Sosiqui
Enduring Muse
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Posted: Thu Dec 05, 2013 10:34 pm
[THIS CLASS IS NOW OPEN! Participating in the first round is all you need to do to 'sign up' so go go go go!]
Sophie was on her way elsewhere when she noticed the odd building that had sprouted up. As she was always the kind to give in to her curiousity, she headed there without hesitation. It smelt and looked absolutely wonderful, so that was an added bonus. Inside was the same and Sophie peeked curiously before stepping inside and then gave a little jump at the sound of the fairy's voice.
Quickly, the ghoul took her seat and listened carefully to what the Professor had to say. As the bowl filled with the mixture, Sophie gave it a sniff and then sneezed. She picked up her wooden spoon and began mixing carefully. The yelling had her worried and she didn't want to mess it up and encounter more of it. Luckily, her first try was pretty successful and she was pleased with herself. Baking wasn't her strong suit but maybe all her attempts were finally paying off.
The house was eyed by the harpy with an incredulous stare. Who in their right mind would live in something so horrendous? A house made of food? Did they want ants? Cause that's how you get ants. She had to check it out. Vanya stepped into the house and instantly took her place at one of the middle counters, drumming her fingers on the top. She eyed the fairy up and down with a smirk. Purple on purple? What was she thinking? And that glitter. Bleh. How did she get it out of her hair?
More importantly.. Vanya picked up a section of her own hair and was disgusted to realise it, too, was covered in glitter. With a sigh, she slumped and only perked up when the bowl and wooden spoons appeared in front of her. She was here, so she might as well continue; otherwise the glitter in her hair would have been for naught. So she mixed as best as she could and when she thought it was enough, she stopped and had a look at her mixture. It didn't look horrible; but it didn't look great, either. The ghoul continued mixing.
Vanya stopped mixing again and looked at the batter, even going so far as to dip a finger in and have a taste. No lumps; a decent amount of sparkle. It looked - and tasted, for that matter - pretty good. She placed the spoon back in her bowl and sat back, waiting for further instructions. Her feathers ruffled a little and she might have been a little proud of herself. Baking wasn't a strength of hers but maybe it would be something she could learn to be good at.
Andrew cam in still wearing a fluffy coat. It was highly unusual that the fire demon wore more than jeans and a light jacket but the, hiss, cold had him shaking the moment he set foot outside his dorm room. There was not a place in the world he was going without some kind of device to keep the evil cold. That and foxfire boots and layers so thick one could barely see the tip of his flaming tail.
Unforchantly he was forced to venture out and do these classes. It was a requirement, that he only did because it got him the minimum grade.
At the least this involved food. He could handle that. Food and ovens. He stat down and mixed the s**t out of the mix. It warmed him up and the stuff even sparkled. It even smelled ok... even if it was a little liquidity. He watched it pour off his spoon.
Many of the classes from this Staff Exchange Programme seemed to involve the elements of baking and decorating, in some form or another. While the ghoul was not too familiar with baking, she wouldn't pass up on a chance to decorate her creations. Not to mention that Gingerbread Architecture sounded very interesting mostly to her player to the frost demon, she herself having dabbled in ice sculpting and architectural forms of a very different medium of course.
There was an awful lot of muttering under her breath from the otherwise sweet-sounding Professor, who had instructed the class to mix the batter for the gingerbread. Assembling the ingredients within the mixing bowl, the frost demon figured that it couldn't possibly go too wrong as she began to stir the mixture with the mixing spoon. This method was certainly more tedious than simply using ice as the base material, but after a while or so of rather exhausting stirring, the batter had acquired a nice, consistent quality. A sheen of glistening coated the surface of the batter that was left to sit, which worried Edel who wondered if she had gotten something wrong for that to happen.
Eitri wasn't entirely sure he was in the right state of mine when he decided to venture over to the strange house. He looked at it carefully; even getting up close to sniff it and touch the walls. He noticed the glitter was incredibly sharp and it stopped him from licking the wall to make sure it was made out of sweets. Curiousity driving him further, he stepped inside and noticed there were a few students in here as well hinting that a class was about to start. He gave a half shrug and took his place at a counter; having nothing better to do at that moment. There was food involved and that was a good enough reason for him.
He made a face at the wooden spoon that appeared in front of him; pulling at the purple bow that decorated. He contemplated pulling the bow off but the yelling that came from the fairy made him a little nervous so he began carefully mixing; bow intact. When he thought he was done, the mixture was looking pretty good but Eitri thought it could look better; so he kept mixing.
His decision to continue mixing probably wasn't the best. What was once smooth and sparkling was now a little bit lumpier with less of a shine. A frown creased his brow. He could create any armour he could think of but here he was struggling with baking. He mixed quickly, tongue poking out of the side of his mouth.
He mixed until his arm started getting tired, making an effort to bash out any lumps he could find. When he stopped, he was pleased to find it was back to what he started with which was better than a lumpy batter. He rocked back in his chair, pleased with himself.
